Blogs

A few weeks ago, we asked you to reach out to Barnes & Noble about
their Nook eBook reader. Many of you did, and while Barnes & Noble
have yet to formally respond, we can continue to put pressure on them.

The current news is that Amazon plans to launch a color Android
device, much like the Nook color. If we continue to put pressure on
B&N, we can use this increased pressure from Amazon as a reason to
make the Nook a device for everyone, not just large book publishers.

American book retailer Barnes & Noble have launched the third model of
their Nook ebook reader. We've previously written about the Nook, but
until recently the Nook did not get much attention due to the limited
options available.

Things have changed and now the Nook represents a real threat to users
because of its invasive DRM, close relationship with DRM champions
Adobe, and because of its use of the Android operating system -- which
might lead many to think the Nook is not defective by design.

If you've logged into YouTube recently, you've probably noticed that
they're pushing their Rental service pretty hard. YouTube Rentals
brings full-length independent movies to YouTube, at a price --
they use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to severely limit
how the videos can be used. Many devices, including certain Android
phones, are unable to access them at all.

This about-face goes against exactly what made YouTube useful in the
first place -- the unencumbered sharing of video.

The DRM-PT and Associação Nacional para o Software Livre (an associate of Free Software Foundation Europe) groups recently celebrated the Day Against DRM together. They hosted a radio show, and then a free movie event followed by a presentation on DRM. The next day, at Portugal's largest book fair, they distributed flyers and started a lively debate on the subject at the presentation of a pro-DRM ebook retailer. We interviewed Marcos Marado, the creator of DRM-PT, about the recent Day Against DRM events.

In a little over a week, we surpassed our goal of taking 200 brick
orders for Nintendo, to protest their claim that they have the right
to "brick" (disable) users' devices when used outside of
Nintendo's outrageous Terms of Service.

In mid-April, Sony's PlayStation Network servers were compromised and
over 77 million customers had their personal data exposed. Two weeks after
Sony learned of the breach, they issued a public apology. As part of
this, they also are offering a bribe they are calling the "welcome
back" program.

Clear your schedule for a worldwide day of action against DRM. On
Wednesday, May 4th, we will be taking action to raise the stakes and
increase awareness about the threats of Digital
Restrictions Management -- in a very significant way!

Leo Babauta is a simplicity blogger & author. He created Zen Habits - a blog with over 200,000 subscribers, mnmlist.com, and the best-selling books focus, The Power of Less, and Zen To Done. He has dedicated the Zen Habits blog and Zen to Done e-book to the public domain.

We asked you to email Sony CEO Howard Stringer during our last call to action and Sony responded by shutting off his email address. Many of you then sent emails to the next email address we posted, Nicole Seligman, Sony Executive VP and General Counsel. Your action was effective — it was an important part of the overall public pressure put on Sony to back off.

Just because you buy a DRM-restricted game doesn't mean you can play it. An unfortunate forum comment temporarily left a gamer unable to play a single-player game purchased through the EA Store. Bioware forum poster Arno recently had his EA account suspended for 72 hours and then found he could not activate his previously preordered and purchased copy of Dragon Age II.

Hooray for Intel's loss -- Intel deserves this for its new DRM features in Sandy Bridge CPUs. If the world were automatically just, Sandy Bridge would fail over and over. But justice does not happen automatically: it is up to us to make Sandy Bridge fail.

"The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman's work represents
the most important work for freedom that this culture, the American
culture, has seen in many many generations because it takes the
ideas of freedom and it removes it from the ivory tower, and it
removes it from lawyers, and places it in a community—a technology
community—that is one of the most important communities defining
the contours of freedom that most people in our culture and
increasingly around the world will know."

This article provides an important back story to our DRM campaign. Here at DefectiveByDesign we try to give our readers the bigger picture of how DRM is a threat to society's freedom: it's more than just about access to music and movies.

("Kettling" refers to the police tactic of surrounding a large group of
protestors in the middle of a protest and keeping them under siege for
hours.)

Well, it's official. Apple has now announced it's bringing the App
Store concept to the Mac and it looks like they'll be restricting apps with
FairPlay DRM too for good measure. When we first began talking about
the problems with the App Store on the iPhone and iPod Touch, people
wanted us to drop it and stop talking about the DRM tricks being
pulled by Apple on the grounds that the iPhone wasn't a general
purpose computer (it is, and the iPad is too) but rather an appliance.

In 2007, Amazon announced their music store. It would, they promised, deliver DRM-free music to U.S. Amazon users. And they did just that. With much fanfare, they rolled out Amazon MP3, touting music downloads for any device. On their website, they explain what's special about their music sales. "DRM-free means that the MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.com do not contain any software that will restrict your use of the file."

"I'm a student from University of Calabria (Unical) , Cosenza Italy. I
write you because for the journey against drm on 4 May we (students)
have done a small event to raise the academic world to the problem of
DRM and I've sent you link of pictures of it (with a very large
delay!)."

Kindles and iPads are making their way into classrooms across the world. Schools like Seton Hill and George Fox are giving iPads to incoming students. Monte Vista Christian School, in California, has sixty of them that are now in the hands of advanced placement students.

Once again, we're seeing boneheaded reactions to the failure of a DRM scheme. DRM is largely ineffective against large-scale
unauthorized copying going on in Eastern Europe and Asia, and yet
the large media companies are happy to parade the opposite as the truth.
Instead of admitting their real goal of disrupting legitimate uses
and restricting customers as much as possible —
forcing them to repeatedly purchase the same records, movies and
TV shows again and again — they pretend that this is technological
progress.